Thursday, August 28, 2014

Elizabeth Warren Comes Out Fighting...For the Colonial Bullies

One of
Elizabeth Warren’s great strengths over the past several years has been the
consistency with which she assailed the sources of economic inequality in the
United States, and the deceptively simple messages with which she did so.

The
economic game was rigged to favour powerful interests, meaning that no matter
how hard they worked, those without access to power and influence were going to
see their share of the national wealth stagnate or decline, their opportunities
dry up, and their ability to influence the political process diminish.

Rather
than asking people to wait, bereft of their dignity, hands outstretched for the
crumbs to topple from the plutocrats’ table, Warren insisted that it was
possible to build a better, more just, and more equal world.

Her
appeal stemmed from her consistency, and her oft-made pledge that she would
always stand up for those without power against those who had it, and wielded
it with impunity and without regard for the collective good.

You
would think that this would be a clear-cut case for Warren.Palestinians live as colonial subjects, ruled
by a colonial power that uses deliberately disproportionate force to subdue
those people in the colony who fight against colonial rule.People in that colony are subject to
indignities including a debilitating blockade, attacks by the colonial
military, and calls for ethnic cleansing by Israeli politicians.

Warren’s
explanation for her vote and her support for arming Israel was typically vapid,
but all the more pitifully so because it came from someone who at her best is
more than capable of issuing a moral call to action

“I think the vote was right”, she explained,
“America has a very special relationship with Israel.Israel lives in a dangerous part of the
world, and a part of the world where there aren’t many liberal democracies and
democracies that are controlled by the rule of law.And we very much need an ally in that part of
the world”.

We do
indeed have a special relationship with Israel.It’s akin to that of a dealer and an addict.We supply the moral and material support
which permit the colonial government to behave in a violent, illegal, and
irresponsible fashion, doing no end of harm to the long-term safety of its own
citizens, no less the Palestinians.We
encourage a culture of impunity that allows the Israeli regime to know that it
can engage in mass murder, bomb United Nations facilities, and flout
international law without repercussions.That is a very special relationship indeed.But it is one which is poisonous and immoral
and destabilizing.

One
reason why there are so few liberal democracies in the Middle East is that the
United States executive, with the support of Congress, props up so many
dictatorships.That aside, I’m not sure
if you can really call a nation that possesses colonies a “liberal
democracy”.Can a “liberal democracy”
exist alongside such unconscionable imbalances in power?Can a country that denies people over whom it
holds such power their self-determination really be called a “liberal
democracy”?

Warren
can talk all she wants about the threat posed by Hamas—never mind that like
Hamas, Israel launches its weapons from amidst densely-populated civilian areas—but
she can’t address the fact that if Hamas stopped launching its rockets
tomorrow, forever, Palestinians would be no closer to securing their
citizenship.

The
Israeli regime simply isn’t interested in relinquishing control over its
colonies without prodding.Too many
illegal settlements have been constructed, too much of the national security
apparatus has been committed, and too many shots in Israel are called by
dangerous fundamentalists.

I hope
that Warren continues to fight for the rights and welfare of the disadvantaged
and disenfranchised majority in the United States.I hope that she continues to call for
regulating the economy in a way that distributes wealth and access more
equitably.And I hope that as she does
so she thinks a little bit harder about her dangerously simplistic view of the
international stage, so far adrift from the moral vision she promotes at home.

But
whatever Warren does in the Senate or on a wider stage, her insistence that to
do right by people you have to get them on their feet and give them a chance
will always ring a little bit more hollow, knowing as we do that she is an
apologist for a colonial government which denies its subjects their rights to
govern themselves and instead pulverizes them with the money and weapons Warren
sent their way.

Her cynical
support for colonialism denies others the opportunity to make that better,
fairer, more just and equal world about which she speaks so compellingly at
home.

3 comments:

Well, you are a man of your word, as we all knew....let the start gathering the kindling for the soon to be digital effigy burning of Elizabeth Warren...who is out there to supplant her in your affections?

Two thoughts:

1) Was left a little confused by this post. What do you think is the best model to characterize the relationship between Israel and Gaza? Waring powers? post-war occupying power? Dominant power and regional poles? Asymmetric non-state vs state conflict?

2) Also I felt like something was missing....like some sort of chart or graph or something :-)

Now now, unlike Elizabeth Warren, I neither condone nor fund violence! I still hope she runs, and Bernie Sanders as well (although he's equally spineless on the issue if I'm not mistaken).I think the best characterization might be a relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. The asymmetric element of the conflict is certainly there, but focussing on the two warring parties misses the point that most of the people murdered by the Israeli military aren't fighting anyone at all...Would that be a chart showing the relationship between the greying of my hair and the spinelessness of our elected officials?

Yeah, I don't know. Hair grayness is easy to measure (don't I know it) but you'd probably have to come up with some good non-dimensional parameter for spinelessness, like grams of spinal mass/per body mass...but I feel like that has peen pretty much constant over time...

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.